Sure, greedy lawfirms try to do their best to extort money. Also, some things depend on a judge.

In Poland a judge may provide some legal advice to a party that is not represented by a lawyer.

The most important thing is not to get yourself threatened by law firm emails and go straight to court. If a judge sees that some douchebag lawyer is pursuing an elderly for pirating an action rpg game, he would die off from laughing :)

If it is possible this hypothetical everygrandma's IP may have been used by her hypothetical everygrandchild to pirate software, she would need to implicate the hypothetical everygrandchild to clear her own name. It is no laughing matter. (Again, this may be different from one country to the next.)

Hmmm ... I wonder if we have that. Obviously there are pro-bono lawyers, but still.

Honestly what we really need (in the US at least I can't speak for Europe) is better Consumer Rights laws to protect our rights when it comes to digital media. Then I'd feel a lot better about going after pirates if there was a standard method in these cases that gave some power to the defendant. Unfortunately the system (again in the US) seems skewed heavily in the company's favor as the "pay us or we'll take you to court" amounts to legal extortion here in many of these cases and rely on most people being too scared to fight to prove their innocence (or tweaking the amount to rely on making it more of a hassle to fight than pay up). We've been gung-ho when it comes to protect IP, but not so much about protecting consumer rights in this digital age. I agree pirates, especially seeders, should be gone after. But we also need to make sure the general populace is also protected from essentially intimidation litigation and that consumers have some basic rights protected too. Ah well. Hopefully some more ... reliable news about exactly what CDPR is doing will come out.

I agree with you on the Innocent until Proven Guilty point...it is going too far if folks not guilty of Pirating things are getting caught up in this, but I really would like to see an Article from a more dependable Source...I don't doubt Innocent folks are falling between the cracks in this...they always do and it's almost impossible for the average person to afford to defend themselves against a slew of Corporate Lawyers...but an Article from a "Torrent News" site doesn't really cut it for me.

I agree with both of you, sirs. Legal system is flawed when it comes to defending against huge law corporations.

And don't get me wrong crazy_dave. When I say judge offers legal advice it usually means that he will tell the party "you may file a petition to free you from legal expenses even if you lose, if you...." , etc etc. not legal counseling. (what kind of evidence to use, how to defend yourself)

In civil courts trials are mostly adversarial (is this correct word?), but there are some legal provisions which slightly help weaker party.

Ah I see. :)

I'm not sure about the wording, but if what you mean by that is that theoretically both sides are considered to be on equal footing such that there is no "beyond all reasonable doubt" when siding with the accuser or the defendant, then yes that is true for civil cases. One side simply needs to make a more compelling case than the other in a civil case.

However there are differences between common law and civil law systems when it comes to whether certain acts are tort (civil court) or crime (criminal court). I've no idea how they apply to piracy, but ironically if they were treated as a crime where one had to prove beyond reasonable doubt that someone pirated, it might actually protect consumers since one would have to actually prove they did it. I dunno. I don't have a law degree so I'm sure there are subtleties here beyond my ken. So maybe not. :)

This bothers me a lot. I have a habit to download off torrents. Not only to bypass DRM (for games I own). Just last week for example, I had Assassin's Creed Revelations on pre-order. But the thing is, I don't have a DVD-reader on my new PC. So I just downloaded the iso off torrents, used the activation key when I got my legal purchased game and done. I have awesome internet speed so downloading such an iso takes a couple of hours and it was available at least two days before the release (and yet I waited for the delivery btw).

If they come after me, what then? I can't afford proper legal representation and I can't afford their "settlement". And afaik you need to counter sue to get legal fees back even if you win. Yeah, I would get the money back eventually (a couple of years by how fucked up the justice system is here) but until that time I have to pay the legal fees myself and I don't have that money.

Show them the game as proof and they will back off, right? I have to ask, in what world are you living that you think these sharks are understanding human beings?

And btw, this was something they said they would do. Why are people doubting this news? Yes, the source is not the most reliable. But it's something CDP themselves said would do...Being slightly skeptical is one thing, dismissive is a another thing.

I thought it was old news that they planned on doing this. As misguided as i think drm is they have a right to do whatever they want with their product but severely impacting everyday people because they could have bought something but chose not to is a real nasty thing to do. I thought i also heard something about them abandoning this as well though i could just have been wishful thinking.

Wow. Interesting point. I laughed uncomfortably. It would probably protect consumers until publishers lobbied for provisions allowing wire taps and security cameras and blood/urine samples and spiriting suspects away in the dead of night to their publishing fortresses of doom.

I'm probably wrong anyway, but it was an amusing thought. :)

What is in doubt is whether or not what percentage of people being wrapped up in this are innocent people (i.e. those who have done nothing wrong) and if in Europe (in particular Germany) people are intimidated into paying a settlement despite not having done anything.

I agree that consumer rights is also an important issue in these matters (you can see my posts in the rest of this thread).

I'm sorry but if someone *can* buy something and chose not to, then they've done exactly what the company's claimed they've done and that means they kinda lose "everyday" people status. DRM actually harms everyday people because it only harms legitimate consumers who have done nothing but support the company by buying their product while pirates remain unaffected. Going after pirates legally harms ... pirates. Now your average downloader/pirate may not be worth taking to court or even morally a bad person, but there are those who are both worth it and morally reprehensible (torrent seeders - initial uploaders - especially). The problem is how many innocent people are getting wrapped up in this (unavoidable but what steps are they taking to prevent it) and what is the process of the legal firm CDPR is using when someone claims they are innocent?

Well, it depends. In Polish criminal code, pirating software is a felony. What does it mean? It mean that prosecutor may confiscate your entire PC (not only hard drive) to find evidence if you pirated software or not, and you may expect it be given back in, hmm... half a year.

Of course they need at least, what you call "probable cause" or "justified suspicion" ?, and of course a warrant, to do so.

Pirates are not their customers. They have never said people are free to pirate nor share (p2p) their games.

I don't understand what you are complaining about: the game developer/publisher looking after its IP rights and going after those who break it, while at the same time offering a DRM- and hassle-free version to actual customer?

A warrant hopefully in that situation. :) "Probable cause" can be justification for getting a search warrant. "Reasonable suspicion" is weaker, but can also be the justification for acting (although only on a brief temporary basis - a quick search only) even without a warrant if a law officer has reason to believe a crime is being/has been committed by this person (i.e. if he hears screams, he can enter a house without a warrant or can stop people for possibly being drunk driving given certain behaviors, etc..., but can't do a cavity search on that basis, he needs probable cause). Most of this info from the odd detective movie and Wikipedia, so it's probably best to take it with a grain of salt. :)

Good point showing that it is not all black and white, but at the same time it must be said your example was from a DRM-enabled game, while the GOG game in question is DRM-free, not needing similar workarounds.

I personally don't see much moral problem downloading a crack for your legally purchased game, if you can't play it otherwise. But, I prefer not to have to do even that because both of the hassle of finding and downloading trojan-ridden cracks, and the possible legal consequences to me. Hence GOG.